On Thu, 2002-02-07 at 11:16, Akim Demaille wrote: > People use a tool which is becoming much bigger than what envisioned > at its inception. It was originally used only by a set of hackers who > keep in touch with the author of that tool. They know each other, > they participate to the development, read the mailing lists, know the > conventions, the unwritten things etc. > > Then the tool has an unexpected success. A world wide success. > People use it more and more, come with more and more demands. The > tool grows, and becomes fat. So fat actually, that it's sick. Its > internals are stretched so much, that it finally becomes necessary to > do major surgery in its guts, to keep it alive. > > But some guy comes and says ``Hey, no way! Don't touch that organ, I > use it as is! I never came on the lists and asked if it was moral and > sane to use it, but I'm the All Mighty User, and I know better than > you what I need, which turns out to be necessarily what needs the > tool''. > > Convinced, the original maintainer continues building his cathedral on > rotten foundations. Of course the tool becomes crippled with bugs, > and a couple of years later, it is simply not usable any longer. > > I think that's bad practice.
All my organs are clearly marked as 'private' by a number of legal documents. Stefan did complain about the lack of a way to tell private from public macros, not about you changing private macros. What should a user of autoconf do? Send a list of macros he wants to use to this list to figure out which of them are OKto use and which are not? -- Gruss, Tobias ------------------------------------------------------------------- Tobias Hunger The box said: 'Windows 95 or better' [EMAIL PROTECTED] So I installed Linux. -------------------------------------------------------------------
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